Introduction
On September 1st, 1947, the delegates to the Tariff Agreement Committee assembled in the Palais des Nations in Geneva to review, article by article, a draft version of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The first issue to preoccupy the assembled delegates was deceptively simple: how to describe the diverse group of future signatories that included sovereign states, the British Dominions, as well as the Crown Colonies of Burma, Ceylon, and Southern Rhodesia, each exercising autonomous decision-making in commercial matters. While the American Draft Charter referred to these entities as ‘contracting parties’, British legal advisors objected, concerned that the formulation implied independent sovereignty for the Dominions and participating colonies, instead proposing the broader term ‘contracting governments’.Footnote 1
This debate over membership and status points to a tension at the heart of the post-war trade regime. While the GATT negotiations embodied the principles of multilateralism and institutionalized equal treatment provisions through the most-favoured nation (MFN) and non-discrimination principles, they also took place in the context of imperial recovery and nascent decolonization, and questions about accommodating imperial interests and authority structures were a recurring and central point of contention.
This article offers a systematic account of how the dynamics of (anti-)imperialism structured negotiations over fundamental aspects of the trade regime, including membership, legal status, and permissible exceptions to the equal treatment provisions. Participants wrestled with the inheritance of colonialism and imperialism, viewing the trade regime as a mechanism either to stabilize declining empires or snuff out their dying embers. The result was a historic compromise, incorporating conflicting interests and leaving open a diverse range of future possibilities, reflecting an international order in flux. The GATT was, thus, neither simply a continuation of the imperial economic system, nor did it mark its dissolution.
Drawing on archival sources, principally the official GATT records, as well as internal documents related to the negotiations from the United States and Great Britain, the following account demonstrates how Empire shaped the constitutional and institutional design of an institution that is still at the heart of the modern trade regime.Footnote 2 It unfolds this argument by drawing out three interconnected aspects of the negotiations. First, the discussions about membership demonstrate that imperialism was a geopolitical reality that could not be avoided. The admission and controversies over the status of dependent territories highlight negotiators’ ability to comprehend and accommodate the peculiar governance structures of composite empires and place the GATT in continuity with 19th- and early 20th-century multilateral technical regimes. In contrast, developing country aspirations for equal voting rights and expanded participation, as well as their attempts to curb the representation of non-sovereign territories, represent a desire to formalize the equality of states. Second, looking at the substantive discussions, especially the preference and development controversies, shows how imperial and anti-imperial world-making ambitions clashed during the negotiations. In preserving imperial preference systems and codifying exceptions and special provisions, the GATT institutionalized continuities with key aspects of imperial economic relations. Conversely, a small number of postcolonial and developing countries mobilized the context of multilateralism and free(er) trade to pursue and strengthen economic and political independence from Empire and overcome persistent structural economic inequalities. Both the embrace of free trade principles, and the vehement advocacy for regional and developmental preferences, international obligations for development assistance, and the expansion of the methods for development represented not only an economic calculus but an alternative international political vision informed and shaped by anticolonial principles. Finally, in drawing forward developing-country interventions to later world-making initiatives, such as the Bandung Conference, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the New International Economic Order (NIEO), it demonstrates the endurance of the developmental and post-imperial vision articulated in the post-war trade negotiations. While the GATT did not include the most ambitious developing country proposals, the ideas, principles, and strategies articulated in the context of post-war trade negotiations continued to shape Third World politics for decades to come.
After reviewing existing accounts of the GATT’s origins, the article first provides a historical overview of the (de-)colonial context in which the negotiations took place, highlighting parallels with earlier attempts to blend multilateralism and imperialism, before focussing on the imperial and anti-imperial world-making ambitions carried into the negotiations. Finally, the epilogue develops the continuity with the NIEO.
Existing approaches to the creation of the GATT
The history of multilateral trade dates back to the 1940s, when global economic affairs were reshaped by a project to build a new multilateral economic order, ushering in an era of institutional governance. In International Relations, a prominent strand of literature has explained the emergence of this liberal economic system by pointing to dynamics internal to the West, especially the role of the United States as the sole (Western) superpower. This status afforded it ‘unprecedented opportunities to purvey its order-building agenda’,Footnote 3 wielding the necessary ambition and capabilities to replace the old imperial system with a global economy designed to suit its interests.Footnote 4
Traditionally, then, the genesis of the GATT has been situated in the dynamics of hegemonic transition and embedded liberalism, describing a bilateral compromise between free trade enthusiasts in the United States and a declining British Empire, firmly under the influence of Keynesian state-interventionism.Footnote 5 The two countries shared a common interest in reducing trade barriers, motivated by a desire to prevent the hostile protectionism that characterized the interwar years and harness free trade’s potential for peace and prosperity. Nonetheless, conflicting economic priorities, aggravated by British post-war economic instability, engendered a need for compromise.Footnote 6 The GATT regime is, thus, regarded as the outcome of an asymmetric bargain between the United States and Britain, with the former making minor concessions to satisfy the Keynesian appetite for domestic welfare and employment policy to safeguard its global security and economic interests.Footnote 7 The result of these negotiations was subsequently presented to a multilateral trade conference, which invited other countries to accede to the Anglo-American framework for global trade.
In this narrative, developing countries are typically described as exception-seekers rather than norm-setters, with their engagement in the negotiations characterized by a general resistance to free-trade principles and demands for exceptions and special privileges.Footnote 8 In an often-quoted passage, Clair Wilcox, the American chairman of the International Trade Conference, remarked that ‘some of the proposals advanced in the name of economic development must be seen to be believed’,Footnote 9 dismissing what he viewed as unreasonable demands to secure release from Charter principles and maintain discriminatory policies. At times, developing country attitudes have received more sympathetic treatment. For example, Hudec and Kock have contextualized Latin American demands by highlighting their desire to protect the nascent industrial bases which had begun to blossom during the depressed trade of the interwar and wartime periods.Footnote 10 Still, even where their participation has received substantive treatment, developing countries have often been treated as narrow special interests with little substantive interest or impact on the design of the trade system. Gardner, for example, maintains that developing countries ‘were only marginally involved in the shaping of the post-war economic order’,Footnote 11 while Wilcox argues that the negotiations recognized the principle that discriminatory trade policy could not be used as a tool for economic development.Footnote 12 This narrative has given rise to a perception of the development discourse as only belatedly entering trade negotiations in the 1950s and 60s, with post-war talks squarely focused on the reconstruction of industrialized nations.Footnote 13
There now exists a substantive body of revisionist work that has reappraised the role of developing countries in the founding of the trade regime. Fakhri has argued that the orthodox emphasis on Anglo-American bilateralism reflects the influence of early accounts, written with the express purpose of securing Republican congressional approval for the Havana Charter for an International Trade Organization (ITO) and therefore systematically underplayed the significance of the development issue.Footnote 14 In contrast, McKenzie, focusing mainly on the interventions of the British dominions, has highlighted that, while the US-centric portrayal of the trade negotiations was a deliberate political choice, the negotiations reflected a more multilateral approach.Footnote 15 Similarly, Wilkinson and Scott have argued that developing countries were ‘active participants’Footnote 16 in the negotiations and substantially shaped their outcomes. While the pursuit of discriminatory measures for the protection of infant industries constituted an important aspect of developing country policy, they also generally accepted the principles outlined in the US Suggested Charter, participated actively and openly in tariff reduction negotiations, and on some occasions even sought more expansive free trade provisions.Footnote 17 This was reflected in the alternative draft charter developed by Brazil, which broadly echoed the free trade principles of the US draft, but also highlighted the differential character of developing countries.Footnote 18 Demands that the trade system incorporate development as a central issue, thus, shaped the negotiations from the start and went far beyond calls for special exceptions and privileges. Accordingly, Das has argued that ‘the arguments made by developing nations during the GATT/ITO negotiations constituted a developmental vision for world order’.Footnote 19
Scholars have also been increasingly conscious of the ways in which imperialism continued to reverberate in the post-World War II (WWII) era, demonstrating the centrality of colonial actors, postcolonial states, and European empires for the development of the states-system and the post-WWII order.Footnote 20 While the imperial debate in the context of the GATT has long been confined to the Anglo-American debate over preferences, some works have engaged more substantively with the way the imperial past shaped the negotiations. Scott, for example, has identified both the prevailing colonial assumptions among some Western delegates as well as the experience of colonial deindustrialization as important factors shaping developing country attitudes towards the free trade regime.Footnote 21 McKenzie and Das, in addition, have situated the negotiations more explicitly in the context of post-war decolonization. Focusing on India, which claimed a leadership role in the trade negotiations, Das shows how arguments about development were explicitly connected to the country’s colonial past and reflected its anticolonial aspirations.Footnote 22
This article builds on insights from both groups of scholars, shifting attention to the ways in which Empire’s persistence and decline shaped the regime’s architecture, from institutional membership to the status of dependent territories, and the asymmetric design of departures from non-discrimination principles. Disputes over imperial preferences and development reflected not only economically motivated bargaining but politically motivated struggles over imperial sovereignty and anticolonial self-determination. These concerns resonated throughout the trade negotiations, reframing the GATT as a transitionary organization, representing a compromise between the old imperial order and the emerging post-war liberal international order, combining commitments to formal equality and MFN with a pattern of exceptions that embedded both imperial continuity and anticolonial developmental aspirations.
In doing so, the article follows scholarship that has considered the post-war trade negotiations for the GATT and ITO in tandem, since separating the two projects departs from the self-perception of those involved in the negotiations.Footnote 23 Diplomats in London, New York, and Geneva conceived of the ITO and GATT projects as intertwined aspects of post-war trade negotiations, with draft chapters and preliminary negotiations for the ITO serving as the foundation for the GATT negotiations. Moreover, the article adopts a historical approach, treating imperialism and decolonization as historical phenomena rather than theoretical constructs, using the term imperialism exclusively in reference to the formal and informal European empires of the late 1940s, consistent with how the historical actors at the GATT negotiations understood it.
Multilateralism in the shadow of empire
Background
Negotiations for the establishment of a post-war multilateral trade regime officially commenced in October of 1946. This followed the establishment of a Preparatory Committee for the International Conference on Trade and Employment by the United Nation’s (UN) Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), tasked with developing draft articles for an ITO.Footnote 24 At its first session in London, a group of 18 nationsFootnote 25 entered preliminary negotiations, subdivided into six drafting committees, discussing an outline for a future rules-based international trade system.Footnote 26 London was the first of three negotiating rounds on international trade that would culminate in the signing of the GATT as an interim agreement meant to govern global trade until the conclusion of ITO negotiations.Footnote 27 A smaller group, largely comprised of technical experts drawn from each delegation, met in January and February of 1947 in New York to revise and prepare the London Draft for the second session of the Preparatory Committee later that year. The meeting also produced the first draft of the GATT, which was largely based on the ITO’s draft chapter on commercial policy.Footnote 28 In addition to these basic commercial principles, the GATT would also include the results of bilateral tariff negotiations among participating countries, held at the third round in Geneva, taking place from April to October of 1947.Footnote 29 Following the successful conclusion of negotiations, the Final Act of the GATT was signed by 23 countries on October 30th, 1947, and entered into force on January 1st, 1948. With the work of the Preparatory Committee complete, ECOSOC convened the UN Conference on Trade and Employment in Havana to undertake the work of establishing the ITO.
The dynamics of power politics played an important role in the negotiations, exemplified in the pivotal role of the United States and the Anglo-American bilateral negotiations leading up to the London Round. The United States had initiated the project for a multilateral trade regime when it distributed its ‘Proposals for Expansion of World Trade and Employment’ in December 1945 and invited a group of 15 countries, the nuclear group, to discuss them. The proposals, in turn, had been shaped by a series of bilateral Anglo-American negotiations, which thus established an initial baseline for the multilateral discussions that followed.Footnote 30
The (anti-)imperial dynamics in which the GATT and ITO negotiations took place are reflected in the list of signatories attached to the Final Act, which included four major European overseas empires, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, all of whom negotiated tariff levels on behalf of their colonies.Footnote 31 The white British dominions, whose degree of association with the British Empire remained unclear following the end of the WWII, accounted for another five signatories, with the British government spending considerable diplomatic resources on maintaining imperial unity. Additionally, India, Pakistan, Burma, Ceylon, and Southern Rhodesia participated in the negotiations while still under British colonial rule, although India and Pakistan gained independence during the negotiations. Syria and Lebanon, likewise, had gained independence immediately prior to or during the trade negotiations, joining three Latin American delegations with a more distant colonial past.
London; or gatekeeping multilateralism
From the outset of the negotiations, questions of participation, membership, and voting rights emerged as key points of contention. The United States and United Kingdom had initially sought to limit participation in the trade negotiations, fearing that an expanded pool of participants could derail plans for a UN-sponsored conference on trade and employment. Correspondingly, when the United States introduced its initiative at the first session of ECOSOC in 1946, it outlined that ‘every effort should be made to avoid [a] situation in which ECOSOC would entrust [the] preparatory work to [a] group other than that suggested above [i.e., the nuclear group]’.Footnote 32
This strategy of managed participation encountered pushback during the ECOSOC discussions, where several additional states sought admission to the Preparatory Committee and prompted the United States to agree to the addition of Chile and Norway. At the suggestion of Sir Ramaswami Mudaliar, the Indian Chairman of ECOSOC, Lebanon was also appointed to the Preparatory Committee.Footnote 33 ECOSOC, thus, expanded non-European representation and influence in the subsequent trade discussions. Indian sponsorship of Lebanese participation also showcased its desire to include a larger number of non-European, postcolonial, and developing countries, which would remain a theme of Indian engagement throughout the trade negotiations. In addition, the ECOSOC debates highlight the active interest of developing countries in the discussions, with Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Syria sending observers to the sessions of the Preparatory Committee.Footnote 34
This expanded participation paved the way for one of the key victories of developing countries in the London round. Both the United States and the United Kingdom had proposed schemes for a weighted distribution of voting rights within the GATT/ITO, which attracted near-unanimous opposition from developing countries. Demanding equal participation in the making of international trade rules, they successfully advocated for the adoption of the one-member one-vote principle, which they characterized as a necessary component for a more just, democratic, and equitable international order.Footnote 35
Geneva; or the problem of composite empire
More significantly, the Geneva round discussions surrounding the participation and status of four not-yet independent territories – India, Burma, Ceylon, and Southern Rhodesia – highlight the enduring logic of the old imperial system. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, semi-sovereign and dependent colonial territories were often admitted to international organizations as full members, enjoying equal voting rights. These open membership policies and the associated principle of divisible sovereignty were integral to an international system dominated by empires, reflecting civilizational and power hierarchies, while ballooning the influence of European empires vis-à-vis smaller (non-European) states. In turn, however, international organizations were also crucial sites of contestation, facilitating the shift towards sovereign equality by providing non-Western states access to international decision-making forums, which they used to advocate for the exclusion of non-sovereign imperial possessions.Footnote 36 Reading the membership debates at the Geneva round against this background shows how GATT negotiators had to wrestle with the reverberations and afterlives of an international system that was only just starting to shed its fundamentally imperial outlook.
At the beginning of the trade negotiations, Indian independence was a fait accompli, necessitating Indian representation at the negotiations. This briefly led to the paradoxical situation wherein a group of Indian experts submitted commentary on behalf of a government and an independent nation that did not yet exist.Footnote 37 While this case highlights the transitionary and decolonial context in which the GATT negotiations took place, independent Indian participation in an international forum was not unprecedented. India had been a founding member of the League of Nations and the UN, and, thus, its standing as an international person was widely recognized. Moreover, India achieved independent statehood before the conclusion of the trade talks, and the case for its inclusion was, thus, founded on the principle of sovereign equality and self-determination, stemming from the anticipation of imminent and full sovereignty.
In contrast, the cases of Burma, Ceylon, and Southern Rhodesia proved more complicated and a sticking point for discussion. At the Geneva negotiations, these autonomous colonial territories had negotiated as independent entities, even while the question of their future membership status had remained unresolved. Like India, Burma and Ceylon were well on their way to independent statehood and, thus, could stake their case for inclusion on their future sovereignty, but, unlike India, they were not yet recognized as full international persons. In addition, the British Crown colony of Southern Rhodesia, which only became independent as Zimbabwe in 1980, was the only dependent territory without an immediate prospect of independence to participate in the negotiations. Wilkinson and Scott’s characterization of the territory as ‘merely [a] satellite regime’Footnote 38 of its colonial master is accurate, but risks obscuring the significance of its inclusion. It is precisely the lack of sovereign status and prospect for independence that highlights how the trade regime accommodated composite imperial formations and decoupled membership from sovereign statehood. Accordingly, the arguments for the inclusion of all three colonies were not based on sovereignty at all, but rather on functional grounds, as the territories possessed autonomous decision-making authority over commercial and trade policy.Footnote 39
The original GATT draft produced by the United States stated that ‘a government may at any time accept this Agreement on behalf of any separate customs territory, for which it has international responsibility and which is self-governing in matters provided for by this Agreement […]’.Footnote 40 Here, the act of joining the GATT is imagined as requiring the legitimating power of sovereign authority. The paragraph establishes a clear distinction between sovereignty and functional autonomy, clarifying that even if dependent territories control their commercial policy, this does not bestow on them the kind of status necessary to conclude international treaties. However, the text goes on to elaborate that the ‘government of such a separate customs territory shall thereupon [i.e. after the agreement has been accepted on its behalf] be entitled to appoint a representative to the Committee’.Footnote 41 Therefore, once the sovereign act had been performed, non-sovereign territories could acquire full membership rights and participate as equals in determining the technical aspects of international trade.
These provisions prompted substantial debate within the Tariff Agreement Committee, where the initial draft was criticized by those who felt it preserved anachronistic distinctions between peripheral and metropolitan countries, but also by those who sought to guard against imperial power politics by placing greater emphasis on sovereign equality.
The delegate of Burma, speaking on behalf of all three non-sovereign territories, criticized the separation of functional autonomy and sovereignty. Pointing to the paradoxical situation that dependent territories had been permitted to negotiate as independent entities, but should not be permitted to sign the agreement, he argued that the exercise of functional autonomy over trade relations warranted full and equal integration into the trade regime. Moreover, highlighting the existing distribution of sovereign prerogatives within the British Empire, he pointed out that the draft provision would bestow ‘upon the metropolitan country more authority and power over autonomous customs territories than it ever possessed in actual practice’.Footnote 42 The delegation, thus, reminded the committee members of the fundamentally divisible character of sovereign prerogatives within the British Empire. Finally, the Burmese delegation advanced a three-pronged argument for the full, equal, and unconditional inclusion of dependent territories, based on pragmatic, historical, and normative reasons. In the subsequent discussion, Burma, as well as a series of other nations, referenced the adherence of the territories in question to international cultural and civilization standards, as well as past precedents in which dependent territories had been incorporated into international legal frameworks. These references to cultural criteria, while not a major point in the debate, demonstrate the residual influence of the standard of civilization, at least in the context of quasi-sovereign colonial entities. The references to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century legal precedent, in turn, highlight how the GATT negotiations were embedded in continuities with the imperial international order.Footnote 43
Although all delegations favoured the inclusion of the three territories, the argument in favour of their ability to appoint representatives and sign the agreement without a metropolitan sovereign intermediary also encountered multifaceted opposition. Czechoslovakia suggested withholding the right for dependent territories to appoint representatives, whereas Australia sought to tie such appointments to the prior approval of metropolitan countries. The Czechoslovakian delegation also asserted that international law did not allow for provisions that would establish equality between sovereign and non-sovereign entities, a concern shared by Chile. Moreover, several countries expressed anxiety that the inclusion of non-sovereign entities could allow empires to arbitrarily declare dependent territories ‘autonomous’ to expand their voting power. Cuba, therefore, suggested that the appointment of representatives should be subject to the approval of the existing members.Footnote 44
Ultimately, the question of non-sovereign membership could not be resolved during the regular session and was delegated to an ad hoc subcommittee for further consultation. The committee produced a final report outlining that, after reviewing additional information, Burma, Ceylon, and Southern Rhodesia could be ‘admitted to participate as full contracting parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade’.Footnote 45 Moreover, it removed the requirement for a metropolitan country to administer the signature of the agreement on behalf of its dependent territories, allowing the latter to sign the Final Act. Finally, the subcommittee did not incorporate any of the suggested restrictions on representation, instead adopting the demand for full equality among sovereign and non-sovereign members. However, in a nod to the increasing importance of formal sovereignty in post-WWII international affairs, the committee made the admission of non-sovereign territories subject to ‘sponsorship through a declaration by the responsible contracting party’,Footnote 46 in which the metropolitan government had to attest to the autonomous character of the dependent territory.
Road to Havana; or readjudicating participation
The same tensions concerning non-sovereign participation, status, and representation animated the debate when the venue shifted from the Preparatory Committee to the ECOSOC in the lead-up to the Havana Conference. In July 1947, Max Suetens, the Belgian Chairman of the Preparatory Committee, presented an interim report to ECOSOC, which outlined recommendations for countries to be invited to the Havana Conference, as well as the distribution of voting rights. ECOSOC, however, departed from these recommendations in both aspects, pushing back against the imperial politics undergirding the Preparatory Committee’s plans, partially reasserting sovereign equality provisions, and enhancing the legitimacy of anti-imperial politics.Footnote 47
On the subject of voting rights, the debate was complicated by the fact that the relevant agenda point fused the question of non-UN member state participationFootnote 48 with the issue of non-sovereign territories.Footnote 49 This conflation obscured the imperial dimension of the debate and fractured anti-imperial alignments, as opposition to the inclusion of non-sovereign territories did not necessarily entail opposition to the representation of all non-UN members. Still, in the larger forum of ECOSOC, the British argument that the Havana Conference was ‘a functional conference, dealing with practical matters’,Footnote 50 whose outcome could only be accepted by those having had ‘a full part in shaping the Charter by having the right to vote’,Footnote 51 failed to convince. Some, such as the United States, Norway, and several Latin American states, favoured restricting the right to vote at the Havana Conference to UN members.Footnote 52 Others, such as Lebanon and Czechoslovakia, supported extending the right to vote to non-members, though they expressed reservations about dependent territories.Footnote 53 In the end, a resolution restricting the right to vote to UN members was opposed only by the United Kingdom, India, Lebanon, and Czechoslovakia.Footnote 54 ECOSOC, thus, partially reasserted sovereignty-based authority. The exclusion of non-sovereign territories from voting at the conference, as well as the refusal to issue invitations directly to such territories, as the United Kingdom had proposed, represented notable rejections of imperial power politics. Yet, by slating Burma, Ceylon, and Southern Rhodesia for conference participation and ITO membership, it nevertheless preserved the imperial accommodations established at Geneva.
Though aligned with Britain in its opposition to the restrictive voting procedures, India’s motivation was overtly anti-imperial, as it campaigned to add the Republic of Indonesia, then engaged in an anticolonial war against the Netherlands, to the list of conference invitees. India grounded its argument for Indonesian inclusion on the same principle that propelled the British colonies to GATT membership, i.e., ‘autonomy in the conduct of its external commercial relations’.Footnote 55 In so doing, it explicitly highlighted the anti-imperial politics at play in the trade negotiations, arguing that ‘economic aims could be pursued fully only in the absence of colonialism’.Footnote 56 Moreover, it called for an invitation to be sent directly to the government of the Indonesian Republic, since the metropolitan country could not be relied upon to forward the invitation. The Indian resolution to this effect drew sharp criticism from the delegates of the imperial powers, who protested the notion that the UN should initiate diplomatic contact with a colonial territory without the consent of the metropolitan power.Footnote 57 The subsequent vote both encapsulated the (anti-)imperial politics at stake in the trade negotiations and prefigured the dynamics that would play out in Havana. Against the united opposition by the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, and the United States, the resolution for Indonesian participation was adopted with the votes of Lebanon, India, Chile, Venezuela, Cuba, and Peru, as developing and postcolonial countries leveraged their numerical advantage to alter the agenda.Footnote 58 In extending this invitation, ECOSOC gave international legitimacy not only to the Indonesian Republic, recognizing it as the de facto government of Indonesia, but to anti-imperial politics more broadly.
While both debates were confined to ECOSOC and concerned with the preparation of the Havana Conference, rather than the GATT, delegates in the Preparatory Committee took note of the events. In a subsequent meeting of the chairman’s committee, the Dutch and British delegates lamented the outcome of the debate and expressed a desire to work to reverse some of the decisions. The Dutch delegate also noted that his delegation represented all overseas territories, including Indonesia, during the GATT negotiations.Footnote 59 The final GATT Agreement, accordingly, made no mention of the autonomous status of the Indonesian Republic, with the Preparatory Committee largely ignoring the outcome of the ECOSOC debate.
Imperial revivalism
The experience with the 19th-century free trade regime and the neo-mercantilist imperial systems that followed it shaped the negotiating position of the declining empires in the 1940s. Harbouring deep resentment for the laissez-faire economics of the mid-19th century, they regarded free trade as contrary to their interests and a contributing factor to imperial decline, prompting their emphasis on empire-protectionism.Footnote 60 At the GATT negotiations, the centrality of dependent territories for the economies of the metropole shaped empires’ bid to preserve colonial mercantilism, pitting not only America against Britain but postcolonial countries against their former rulers.
The spectre of decolonization: the cost of losing an empire
After Canada first extended preferential treatment to British goods at the end of the 19th century, imperial preferences quickly rose in prominence after the United Kingdom abandoned its free trade policy, tying Britain, its dominions, and the Empire together in a tariff network. Even as Commonwealth preferences were determined by each Commonwealth nation to serve their narrow national interests and attempts to achieve greater unity at the 1932 Ottawa conference yielded little return, imperial preferences gained increasing economic, symbolic, and political significance over the course of the first half of the 20th century.Footnote 61 Throughout the 1930s and 40s, the United Kingdom became increasingly dependent on the empire to buttress the metropolitan economy. During the WWII, the empire constituted the principal economic support for the British war effort, and imperial economic decision-making had become centralized in London to coordinate the mobilization of strategic resources, while colonial trade within the sterling area was tightly regulated.Footnote 62 Britain ensured access to vital imports from overseas territories by restricting the free flow of goods and facilitating bulk purchases while simultaneously limiting manufactured exports to the colonies.Footnote 63 Britain did not immediately pay for colonial exports, accumulating sterling balances over the course of the war, i.e., ‘a debt due by His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom directly to other parts of the Empire’.Footnote 64 In 1946, the British colonies held roughly 20–25 per cent of this debt, collectively constituting the largest creditor of the United Kingdom within the Sterling Area, second only to India.Footnote 65 Aside from their economic significance, imperial preferences acquired increasing symbolic significance, representing the enduring ties between Great Britain and its dominions, at a time when the latter increasingly moved towards independent statehood.Footnote 66 Similarly, the empire had become a critical economic and geopolitical asset in the eyes of imperial France, with the colonies constituting its primary trading partner during the interwar years, as well as a major destination for capital investments.Footnote 67
In the wake of the war, European metropoles again looked to their empires to facilitate economic recovery by drawing on the resources of the periphery. The United Kingdom continued the wartime economy, maintaining colonial export licenses and governmental sanctions to gain preferential access to colonial exports below market price.Footnote 68 The colonies, in turn, became an increasingly important destination for manufactured goods, which had to be imported at full price, leading to an ever-worsening colonial balance of trade. In a similar dynamic, the French empire became an increasingly important market for metropolitan exports, absorbing 33.1 per cent of exports in 1946, and growing to 44.4 per cent in 1948.Footnote 69 Moreover, the colonies played a central role in attempts to alleviate the European balance of payments crisis against the dollar by supplying essential goods that would otherwise have had to be imported from the United States.Footnote 70 For Britain, colonial exports of primary products to the United States also constituted a key source of dollar earnings in the early post-war years.Footnote 71 During the GATT negotiations, this dependence underpinned European empires’ persistent attempts to shield their preference systems from the requirements of MFN and non-discrimination.
Imperial anxiety: empires and the post-war trade regime
Disagreements over the future of imperial preference systems quickly emerged as a critical point of contention in the negotiations, repeatedly threatening to derail the project of an ITO.Footnote 72 The American position on imperial preference had been clear from the outset, summarized by Harry Hawkins, the American Minister-Counselor for Economic Affairs at the US Embassy in London and delegate to the first meeting of the Preparatory Committee in London, who declared that ‘in an ideal world it would be desirable, with one stroke of the pen, to abolish all preferences’.Footnote 73 However, notwithstanding American pressure, preliminary discussions leading up to the London round demonstrated that the empires would not unilaterally abandon their preferences. Accordingly, the US Suggested Charter that formed the basis for debate in London specified that the
provisions of paragraph 1 of this Article shall not be construed to require the elimination of any preference in the rate of ordinary import customs duty which does not exceed the preference in force in any Member country on July 1st, 1939 […].Footnote 74
In contrast, Article 18 outlined strict rules for substantial reductions or eliminations of margins of preference over the course of the tariff negotiations.Footnote 75 The empires, however, positioned themselves in opposition to the draft articles on preferences. The United Kingdom pointed to the Ottawa System as a pre-existing and legally binding agreement with the dominions, which prevented it from taking unilateral action on preferences without the consent of the Commonwealth countries.Footnote 76 However, this objection to the American draft articles was a thinly veiled attempt at circumventing demands for preference reductions, as the United Kingdom subsequently engaged in few efforts to secure waivers from its dominions. This fact was not lost on American negotiators in London and Geneva, who communicated that it was principally the United Kingdom standing in the way of preference elimination.Footnote 77 The Netherlands similarly raised concerns over its preferences in the Dutch Indies, the Belgian Congo, and Indonesia. Due to the changing political structure of the Dutch Empire, its representatives voiced principled objections to the outlawing of new preferences, declaring that a possible change in the tariff relationship with Indonesia, as well as a preferential agreement with the Dutch Indies by Belgium under the framework of the Benelux Customs Union, might necessitate future preferential agreements. Beyond this, the Netherlands sought to protect its preferential access to the Belgian Congo.Footnote 78 France, in turn, not only sought to safeguard its existing colonial preferences but attempted to establish an ad valorem system that sought to increase the margin of preferences beyond the levels of 1939.Footnote 79
As a result of this opposition, the London Draft of the ITO charter incorporated a broader mandate for maintaining preferences than the US draft.Footnote 80 Nonetheless, the question of imperial preference remained a point of contention during the New York and Geneva rounds. While the United States had accepted that the complete elimination of preferences was not feasible, it demanded substantial eliminations and reductions of preference margins in return for tariff concessions. However, the United Kingdom and its dominions, save Canada, were unwilling to budge. A revised offer on preferences from Commonwealth countries failed to satisfy US representatives in Geneva. In a detailed statistical account, they outlined that the effect of suggested cuts in preferences would leave the mercantilist British Empire largely intact. The proposal, they argued, would not affect 71 per cent of preferential trade between Commonwealth countries, eliminating only 7 per cent of preference margins. The concessions in colonial trade were even more ineffectual, prompting no action on 97 per cent of preferences and eliminating less than 1 per cent.Footnote 81 However, to the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, US concessions on tariffs did not provide adequate compensation for substantial action on empire preference.Footnote 82
This deadlock threatened the success of negotiations until the United States largely accepted the Commonwealth offer, trading a 20 per cent reduction of all colonial preference margins in exchange for a concession on the percentages of synthetic rubber in American rubber products that the United States had previously rejected.Footnote 83 With the British colonies being major exporters of natural rubber, the potential dollar-earning from the rubber trade outweighed the losses from reductions in preference margins.
While Britain took the lead in preserving imperial preferences, France followed suit to secure its own colonial trade system. While the United States defeated French attempts to establish ad valorem preferences, an agreement was reached that defined permitted preferential margins as the average margin from 1937 to 1939, considerably higher than the United States had desired. In the subsequent tariff negotiations, France was equally successful in safeguarding its mercantilist preference system even as it actively participated in the free trade regime.Footnote 84
The Final Act of the GATT reflects the persistent effort of European countries to preserve their colonial empires. Annexes A, B, and C to the document specify broad exemptions from the MFN clause for the British and French empires and the dependent territories of the Benelux Customs Union, carrying colonial trade arrangements over into the post-war trade regime. The regime also showed continuities with the desire of empires for open access to peripheral markets and primary products, exemplified by the declaration of raw materials as common resources. Moreover, the new liberalized trade regime allowed industrialized nations to continue their protective agricultural schemas constructed during the interwar period, shielding their markets against cheap agricultural products from the developing world.Footnote 85 While the GATT did not formally distinguish between industrial and agricultural products, several exceptions that accommodated existing support regimes by permitting the use of quantitative restrictions and export subsidies effectively excluded their agricultural sectors from the scope of trade liberalization.Footnote 86
Anti-imperial world-making
The negotiating position of postcolonial nations at the GATT was likewise shaped by their history of exploitation under 19th-century free trade and imperial preference systems. This resulted in opposition to empires’ attempts to entrench the colonial economic system as well as a cautious engagement with the principles articulated in the American draft charter. While principally supporting the establishment of a free trade regime, they were wary of the apparent lack of provisions for development. Despite the legacies of colonialism never being explicitly discussed in the trade negotiations, as the developed countries sought to confine the colonial debate as a political, rather than economic, phenomenon under the purview of the UN, they impacted postcolonial positions and policy objectives at the negotiations and the GATT itself in tangible ways.Footnote 87
Opposing empire: preferences and regional trade
For empires, maintaining protectionist colonial preferences was essential for preserving the affiliation between different parts of the empire and supporting the struggling metropolitan economies. Postcolonial negotiators at the GATT likewise remarked on the purpose of preferences as providing unilateral benefits to the imperial capitals, vigorously opposing their continuation under the multilateral trade regime.
At the London Conference, the Chinese delegation submitted a memorandum on tariffs and tariff preferences, branding imperial preferences as a stark departure from MFN principles. Significantly, the delegation remarked that continuing the practice would result in China reserving the right to construct a preferential zone of its own.Footnote 88 The document is remarkable for its explicit articulation of the dual strategy pursued by postcolonial and developing countries in the GATT negotiations. They articulated a rigorous opposition to Empire, utilizing the very principles set forth in the US Suggested Charter while simultaneously using the insistence of the empires on preserving colonial trade legacies as a lever to advance their own priorities, drawing a sharp contrast between the anxiety of diminishing empires and the developmental aspirations of newly formed states.
Notably, this opposition was echoed by postcolonial countries that were part of or had the opportunity to join imperial preference systems, most significantly, India. India had been a signatory of the 1932 Ottawa agreement and was entitled to preferential access to British markets and goods.Footnote 89 However, in the Indian memorandum and commentary on the US Suggested Charter at the London Conference, the delegation elaborated on the exploitative nature of preferences and their economic irrelevance to the Indian economy, declaring that their partial design in favour of the United Kingdom meant that India could expect little benefit for its exports while suffering from the adverse consequences of trade restrictions. Therefore,
Under conditions of full employment and expanding trade in the leading industrial countries, India has everything to gain by the reduction or removal of preferences […]. If the colonial preferences are, however, continued in favour of the U.K., India will stand to lose by discrimination against her export […]. India’s interest, therefore, lies in supporting the move for the complete elimination of preferences and she should readily agree to the “initial steps in the process of elimination”.Footnote 90
This policy perpetuated long-standing nationalist opposition to preferences during the colonial period as ‘resentment over domestic political, economic and racial subordination, as well as national inequality within the Empire, sustained an opposition to imperial preference […]’.Footnote 91 For postcolonial countries, ‘free trade’ accordingly took on a meaning that was formulated principally in opposition to Empire and extended beyond the reduction of trade barriers and the expansion of market access. Instead, the elimination of imperial preference systems that placed tight restrictions on postcolonial countries’ scope for economic and trade policy and threatened to preserve colonial dependencies was part of a conception of free trade that articulated a vision of economic and political independence from European empires. Whereas in the neoliberal age, free trade has become commonly associated with a loss of national political sovereignty and developing country dependency, postcolonial members at the GATT identified its potential as an essential component for securing their newly found political autonomy and breaking free from centuries of colonial domination.Footnote 92
Correspondingly, in the negotiations, India led a coalition of postcolonial countries to undermine the United Kingdom’s efforts to preserve the empire. This manifested not only in a rejection of imperial claims but also in designs for the construction of rival preference systems, justified by pointing to exceptions for British preferences. At the London conference, the delegation outlined that India had ambitions not only to preserve long-standing preferences with Burma but to construct a system of regional preference aimed at supporting economic development in the region. Emphasizing their common economic condition and objectives, India suggested that it would pursue ‘preferences necessary to foster the economic development of small countries’Footnote 93 in its neighbourhood, seeking to assist their industrialization by providing a large market for manufacturing output and protection from international competition.
The idea that regional preference networks could serve as an antidote to imperial domination had already taken shape in Latin America during the 1930s and 40s. Initially aimed against US interventionism, the Pan-Latin American movement advocated for regional economic cooperation in pursuit of state-led development and industrialization.Footnote 94 Latin American countries continued to pursue this policy at the GATT. The Chilean delegation, for instance, citing its shared ancestry and interests with other Latin American countries, as well as the long-standing character of economic ties between them, advocated for the recognition of preferential agreements between neighbouring countries. In doing so, it rebuked American criticism of developmental preferences by explicitly pointing to the accommodations made for the empires:
I think a sovereign State has its own right to consider whether it is important or not, and I do not see why we should make a reservation or a condition to the preferences asked by my government if that condition does not apply to the other [i.e., the imperial] preferences.Footnote 95
This push for regionalism was echoed by the Middle Eastern countries present at the negotiations, who also pressed for integration and preferences.Footnote 96
These efforts were only partially successful, as empire preferences persisted in a meaningful way. However, the United States and Britain could not simply negotiate preferences bilaterally and had to make significant concessions to the postcolonial coalition. The ITO draft that emerged in the Geneva round incorporated a recognition that the objective of economic development may necessitate future preferential agreements between developing countries.Footnote 97 Beyond this, the GATT Final Act included exemptions from MFN for preferences between Chile and its Latin American neighbours and between Middle Eastern countries.Footnote 98
Reconfiguring free trade: the quest for development
In addition to regional integration, developing countries sought to reorient the outlook of the trade regime to support their economic development. Development had already emerged as a post-war priority in the negotiations for the International Monetary Fund and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.Footnote 99 Yet, the initial draft of the US Suggested Charter made no mention of the goal of economic development, encountering vociferous opposition from developing countries, who argued that the draft principally served to perpetuate the existing economic structures and inequalities.Footnote 100 To address developing country demands, a joint committee on industrial development was set up during the London round, and a draft chapter on economic development and industrialization was added, marking the single most significant revision of the American proposal, drawing admiration and fury alike from US delegates.Footnote 101
In the debate, France and Britain advanced a narrow vision of development, drawing on long-standing colonial development discourses. France, referencing the state of underdevelopment in its colonies, cited its long-standing support for what it saw as developmental initiatives. Britain similarly emphasized technical know-how transfers, suggesting that such knowledge could be sold at the discretion of industrialized countries, and economic efficiency as the guiding principles of any development provisions. Both denied the special character of underdeveloped nations, arguing that concerns about infant industries equally applied to them.Footnote 102
In contrast, a group of developing countries articulated what Das has called ‘a developmental vision for world order […] articulating a positive vision for international law and relations’,Footnote 103 designed as the economic counterpart to political independence. While they principally supported the creation of a multilateral trade regime, international economic cooperation, and liberalization of trade relations, they also sought to embed development as a core ambition of the international economic order and argued for the inclusion of a variety of principles, obligations, and exceptions designed to further industrialization.Footnote 104 This vision of developmentalism differed sharply from both its colonial predecessors and the visions of industrialized countries, emphasizing manufacturing industries over extractivism as a means to maximize increases in efficiency and productivity of labour.Footnote 105
Tawale and Das have highlighted the Indian leadership in making the case for industrialization at the GATT, internationalizing the principle of the developmental state to argue for the state-led simultaneous expansion of different economic sectors and industrial diversification to prevent over-reliance on a single industry. To achieve this, the delegation argued, short-run inefficiencies, unprofitability, and direct government controls had to be accepted in order to ensure long-run developmental gains.Footnote 106 Similar views were widespread among developing countries. The Lebanese delegation, for instance, countered the British caution that industrialization should be guided and limited by the principle of efficiency by insisting on the expansion of manufacturing capabilities to combat their unequal position in the international economy. Highlighting that such inequality was not only the result of factors found in the developing countries themselves but also the larger international economic environment, it asserted that the monopoly position of developed countries over manufactured goods begot unequal bargains.Footnote 107
In the subsequent discussion, the permissible scope of discriminatory measures in support of development objectives emerged as a contentious issue. To protect infant industries and facilitate industrialization, developing countries sought recognition of the principle that protective measures, especially quantitative restrictions, constituted legitimate and effective ways of promoting development.Footnote 108 While often portrayed as evidence of developing country obstructionism and exception-seeking, such proposals often mirrored similar exceptions for industrialized countries. For example, India pointed to existing exceptions for countries in a balance of payments crisis, a departure from MFN principally serving British interests, to argue for the right to use the same measures for targeted development initiatives.Footnote 109
The second emphasis of developing countries was to turn former imperial powers and developed countries into responsible stakeholders of international development, by creating international obligations for supporting the economic growth of developing countries. At the London Meeting, Chile and Brazil were among the countries advocating for the creation of financial facilities to support developing countries, pointing to the role of international investment as a means for growing the volume of international trade. This included provisions for the supply of capital and capital goods, government investments, and loans at favourable rates, alongside the transfer of know-how.Footnote 110 They placed a special emphasis on the role of public capital for international development, further strengthened by demands to curb the international property rights regime by substantially weakening protections for private capital, citing its legacy of exploitation in developing and postcolonial countries.Footnote 111 Moreover, in response to the characterization of raw materials as common goods, India and Chile argued that the manufactured and capital goods essential for economic expansion and development should likewise be regarded as common international resources.Footnote 112 Beyond this, Brazil and India advocated for expanding the full-employment provisions to incorporate the phenomenon of underemployment and objected to the provisions for high labour standards, citing their potential for hampering productivity increases.Footnote 113 This developmentalism, thus, sought to fashion a climate of international solidarity for development and make substantial alterations to the rules and procedures governing global trade to establish development as a primary objective, redirecting international resources to protect postcolonial economic independence.Footnote 114
Developing countries had varied successes in incorporating their demands in the ITO drafts and the GATT Final Act. The documents produced in the London, New York, and Geneva rounds reflect a broad acceptance of the proposed developmental principles, and developing countries successfully inserted international obligations for the supply of capital, capital goods, equipment, and knowledge transfers into the ITO charter. Importantly, these provisions included a safeguarding paragraph that specified that investments must not be misused ‘as a basis for interference in the internal affairs or national policies of Members’.Footnote 115 Developing countries were relatively less successful in securing exceptions on the methods they sought to deploy in the pursuit of development, as attaining release from non-discrimination for the purposes of development required undergoing a drawn-out process centred on negotiations between contracting parties on a case-by-case basis.Footnote 116 This complicated, inefficient, and time-consuming procedure was in sharp contrast with the provisions that outlined deviations from MFN designed with the interests of industrialized countries in mind, which could be applied without negotiations or approval from other member states. The developmental articles of the ITO and GATT were further diluted by limiting the scope for protective measures by clarifying that
an unwise use of such measures would impose undue burdens on their own economies and unwarranted restrictions on international trade and might increase unnecessarily the difficulties of adjustment for the economies of other countries.Footnote 117
Moreover, developed countries reasserted the property rights regime, reminding developing countries that their pursuit of industrialization could not come at the expense of foreign enterprise or capital.Footnote 118
Nevertheless, when the United States Congress finally turned to ratifying the Havana Charter in 1950, the compromise failed to win the support of American business interests, who objected not only to the many exceptions to free trade principles but especially to the economic principles that had been advanced by developing countries. They abhorred the democratization of international economic governance, fearing it exposed the United States to the dictates of trade rules by developing countries, while arguments in favour of government interventionism and economic sovereignty raised the spectre of economic planning. Against the background of the escalating Cold War, the (anti-)imperial dynamics that animated the GATT and ITO negotiations became refracted through the lens of Soviet-American system competition. With the United States failing to ratify the Charter, the ITO project was abandoned, and the GATT gradually expanded to become the framework governing international trade relations.Footnote 119
Epilogue: from the post-war to the NIEO moment
Throughout the 1960s and 70s, postcolonial countries, now multiplied in number after decades of anticolonial struggles, developed a series of proposals for a NIEO designed to assert international economic rights and fashion a more equitable global economic system.Footnote 120 At times, the NIEO has been characterized as a ‘radical departure from the post-war international order’Footnote 121 and a reckoning with the sustained inequalities it produced. Indeed, the NIEO was the most prominent of a series of efforts throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s to establish formal movements of postcolonial and developing countries to counterbalance the dominance of the global North. But if the NIEO is aptly described as a vision for ‘an alternative order of global economic integration in which countries in the south could catch up with the economic achievements of the north, thus creating a material foundation for political equality between states in the north and south’,Footnote 122 undoubtedly, the GATT/ITO negotiations must be understood as part of its genealogy. Already in 1987, Hudec quipped that ‘about the only major element of recent developing-country proposals for a New International Economic Order that did not appear during the GATT-ITO negotiations was the call for systematic tariff preferences by the developed countries’.Footnote 123 While the statement is certainly hyperbolic, Hudec rightly highlights the significant continuities connecting the NIEO to the post-war trade negotiations.
One of the fundamental aspects of future Third World politics innovated during the post-war negotiations was the articulation of the history of colonialism as both a unifying past and present challenge. While anticolonial internationalists had built transnational and transimperial solidarity networks and Latin American states had engaged in regional coordination throughout the interwar years, these affinities had to be adapted to the state-centric and global conditions of the post-war environment.Footnote 124 At the GATT/ITO negotiations, non-Western countries coalesced, recognizing economic underdevelopment as a mutual affliction rooted in colonial domination and positioned themselves in opposition to imperial economic relations. India in particular viewed itself as taking the lead of the developing country coalition to secure shared objectives.Footnote 125 Ad hoc coalition-building allowed developing countries to win concessions on some common economic concerns, although there were no efforts to formalize or organize the mutual sympathies and developing countries, far from being a homogeneous bloc, articulated a diverse set of interests and priorities.Footnote 126
In the subsequent decades, unifying the Third World around this common heritage became a persistent theme, as developing countries sought to overcome Cold War divisions and competing national interests to leverage their collective power. At the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, for instance, participants committed to ‘economic co-operation on the basis of mutual interests and respect for national sovereignty’Footnote 127 and promised to enhance coordination in international forums. Nine years later, during the first UNCTAD in 1964, developing countries largely worked together as a unified bloc.Footnote 128 Noting the substantive similarities with the post-war GATT negotiations, Tawale has argued that this political coordination, which became embedded in the G-77, constituted the most significant achievement of the conference.Footnote 129 These newly organized forums subsequently played a central role in the development of the NIEO proposals, which likewise mobilized the history of colonialism to display developing countries as a coherent political group, despite ideological, economic, and national differences.Footnote 130
Similarly, like the NIEO, the GATT/ITO negotiations were an opportunity for developing countries to articulate a comprehensive vision for an alternative multilateral economic order. The scope of the post-war negotiations had been expansive, as a ‘general consensus […] on the necessity to think in terms of an integrated scheme of world economic progress’Footnote 131 emerged. This allowed developing countries to subject the economic principles underlying the American draft charter to comprehensive scrutiny, for example, by challenging the belief that market forces and the dynamics of competitive advantage could be relied upon to generate development. In the process, developing countries articulated a distinct vision of multilateralism, characterized by an international commitment to development and state-led industrialization. Among others, they articulated critiques of developed-country protectionism and formulated a vision for deeper integration via a network of trade preferences among developing countries to insulate against international competition and promote mutual economic growth. These policies proved a crucial innovation that shaped developing country international economic policy for the decades to come.Footnote 132
To pursue this ambitious agenda, the NIEO reframed development in the language of the rights and duties of states, seeking to enhance states’ economic rights in an effort to overcome structural inequalities.Footnote 133 While UNCTAD’s elaboration of a right to permanent sovereignty over natural resources is a frequently cited precursor, developing countries at the GATT negotiations similarly sought to embed legal rights and obligations to advance their developmental priorities.Footnote 134 During the negotiations, developing countries sought recognition of their right to use discriminatory measures for development, not as concessions to weakness but as legitimate instruments of state-led industrialization. This marked an early use of rights-based claims to advance states’ autonomy in setting economic policy and pursuing economic development. This reframing is particularly evident in the parallel drawn between raw materials and certain manufactured goods as common international resources. While the former reflected the existing international division of labour wherein peripheral countries supplied primary goods to industrial centres, the latter must be understood as an attempt to supplant this orientation, seeking to secure access to the goods necessary for development. Developing countries likewise invoked the language of duties of states, outlining obligations for industrialized countries to support development, for example by providing access to capital and know-how.
Developing countries at the GATT/ITO negotiations also explicitly framed efforts to enhance their influence in international economics in terms of democratization and equity between states. The adoption of the one-member-one-vote principle during the London negotiations marked a key victory, ensuring formal equality in decision-making. Similarly, stripping non-UN members of the right to vote during the Havana Conference limited the influence of imperial powers and strengthened the principle of sovereign equality and equal rights of states. In Geneva, similar concerns animated developing country scepticism over the role and status of non-sovereign territories. At the same time, developing countries sought to enhance their collective bargaining power by petitioning for the inclusion of more such countries. Especially the case of Indonesia demonstrates how such membership debates were connected to the struggle against Empire. The democratization of international relations and establishment of equal voting rights in other international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, subsequently became a central Third World demand in the 1960s and 70s.Footnote 135
Finally, there are important substantive continuities between the post-war and NIEO moments. While the abandonment of the ITO project meant that the international trade regime did not incorporate many of the concessions won by developing countries in the GATT/ITO negotiations, the same issues quickly resurfaced in the context of the GATT.Footnote 136 In fact, throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, developing countries simultaneously sought to expand the developmental scope of the GATT, even as they organized alternative forums alongside it. Trade remained front and centre, as issues such as the stabilization of commodity prices through government intervention, preferences between developing countries, and, later, unilateral preferences for developing countries to developed country markets, and trade restrictions to nurture infant industries were renegotiated.Footnote 137
Thus, while the NIEO and other Third World projects undoubtedly innovated both conceptually and methodologically, they do not constitute a break with postcolonial world-making at the GATT and ITO but should be seen as a revival and radicalization of earlier efforts to fundamentally alter the international economy.
Video Abstract
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Acknowledgements
I want to thank Quentin Bruneau for his guidance in the preparation of this article. I also thank the three anonymous reviewers, whose feedback and suggestions have strengthened the argument.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
